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Friday, February 11, 2011

A Day Spent Looking at Snow and Ice

It was very hard to get up in the morning, all the traveling really took it out of us! After the hotel buffet breakfast, where they served french fries (?) and the best pancakes we have ever had, we headed out to the ice sculptures!

After the ice sculptures we started to make our way back over to the snow sculptures. Today was not so blustery and we figured they would have the main attractions fixed up from the previous night. We hopped we’d be able to see some more detail! Even though is wasn’t a snow flurry outside, it was still very cold, we walked the subways in order to get to the snow sculpture street. To our surprise, but should not have been, underground was lined with malls! In one area in particular I stumbled across my ‘Afternoon Tea’ store! I’m kicking myself for not purchasing a couple of the things I saw, maybe they’ll pop up in the store next to Yokosuka-Chuo, fingers cross!

After swooning over Afternoon Tea like usual, we turned around and realized we were in the land of sweets! The large room was filled with vender after vender of chocolate, sweets, and pastry companies and EVERYONE had samples. Crazy dangerous to meander through scoping out the options.

(Top right: chocolates in heart box made out of chocolate. Third row from top on the right: a popular Japanese treat made with black bean filling.)

The snow sculptures were indeed cleaned up and full of detail! We were in awe, they looked completely different! Unfortunately the crowds were overwhelmingly huge so we only saw the first couple before we decided to head towards to the chocolate factory/museum!

The chocolate factory/museum tour was part of the planed second day but we opted for a free day so we could sight-see on our own time. Instead of taking a tour bus to the factory we just used the subway.

Much like the brewery, the factory was a gorgeous building!

(We could pay $10 to have the picture they took with their camera (which was exactly like ours) or we could have them use our camera to take a picture…)

(My favorite {hot} chocolate cup)

(Chocolate tunnel: got to watch/hear how chocolate is made)

(Making their heavenly cookies. We received one after we bought our entrance ticket. Also the cookie we posed with.)

(You could sign up to decorate cookies! Oh you know we did it!)

(Chris made himself a cookie that said, “happy 25th birthday.” If we thought it through we should have made each other heart shaped Valentine cookies… oops”

We were breaching exhaustion after the cookies so we thought it best to head back to our hotel to recuperate before heading to dinner. On our way back to the hotel we noticed a Pullman Bakery! It was the perfect sighting.

For dinner we went to Ramen Alley! The name was very suitable! It was a tight little alleyway lined with ramen joints that had one cook and sat maybe 8 people. Enjoyable experience and exceptionally tasty ramen! Beats out any Top-Ramen I’ve consumed in my day.

After dinner we headed out to do one last look at the ice and snow sculptures before calling it a night!

The following photos were part of a snow carving contest between global participants:

(First place~People’s Republic of China)

(United State {Hawaii})

(Hong Kong)

(Sweden. As much as I love my swedish roots, we thought this one was a joke… It was called ‘Stuck in Construction.’ Who enters a block into a snow sculpting contest? ha!)

(Finland. We both very much enjoyed the idea of this one. It was called ‘Impression.’)